Sir, - Donegal has been struggling for economic survival for the past 50 years, to my knowledge. It will still be doing that in another 50 years' time unless some fresh marketing thinking is applied.
Look at the record to date. A veneer factory where the raw materials were shipped from Africa to Creeslough, processed and shipped out again to God knows where. Sand which was quarried by crowbar and gelignite from the top of Muckish and shipped to St Helen's. Dolls, knitwear, snack foods, home-grown vegetables, carpets and boats, to name but a few. The markets were 200 miles away. The businesses failed, surprise, surprise.
Another common thread is a history of politicians pursuing some republican Valhalla and, instead of building an appropriate local economy, organising grants for people who should have negotiated their funding in the commerical marketplace, in the first instance.
Rule one in product marketing is that you are in the selling business, not transportation. Donegal's isolation means that the cost of transport has to be subsidised by low-cost labour, or grant aided, or both. The rot is in the barrel from day one. Or even earlier.
When I was at college in Letterkenny, many moons ago, I was surrounded by students whose fees were grant-aided, as was their food, their books and the very clothes they sat in. Why? Because they came from the Gaeltacht. The culture started early and continues to this day, accepting grant aid as though it doesn't properly belong to the Third World.
Grant-aiding has been the curse of Donegal. It attracted industry that was in for the short haul. It took no account of the development of the workers' careers or skill development. What skill would you want to develop in a sweatshop?
Which brings me to the much vaunted tourist industry. Doubtless, it's a high employer and a great boon to aspiring chambermaids, kitchen porters, cleaners, cutlery polishers, gardeners, etc. Make no mistake who makes money out of tourism: the unseen owners of hotels which are still being grant-aided, the craft shops, pubs, the gombeen men and the Sunday collection.
Can we be surprised, then, that Donegal has failed to hold any external industry that pays a decent week's wages, that doesn't need subsidies from the taxpayer and that survives for more than a single generation? Now that the Northerners have colonised Donegal with their cloned summer homes, perhaps the local business community should think seriously of setting up reciprocal joint ventures with Northern businesses who could use an out-sourcing facility in another financial jurisdiction? Donegal should think local and local is not Dublin or the Republic. I believe the IDB are pretty flaithuil too! - Yours, etc., Terence Ferry,
St Catherine's Avenue, Dublin 8.